I’ve had a friend phone me to say that she has received 5 emails from ‘me’, which weren’t from me. She says my email account must have been hacked. I’ve never had this happen before. Could someone explain exactly what I should do? If I set up a new email for example, what do I do with the old account? How do I make sure all friends/contacts/organisations get my new email safely. Thanks.

Be aware you may not have been hacked at this point, but a similar email address with your name attached is being used and sent to your contacts. I saw quite a bit of this a few years ago. However it may be a hack – you need to look carefully at the headers of the message your friend has received. Regardless as a precaution change your password for your current email account immediately and if possible set up 2 part authentication (using a trusted device or phone) and you should be able to continue using it.

It’s a very old and simple trick to ‘spoof’ email. One can easily send mail that, on first glance, appears to be from president@whitehouse.gov or similar. Some spammers will forge the From: field, as it may get them through a spam filter and it has more chance of being opened by the victim.

As has been mentioned above, get a geek to look at the headers to trace the path the mail took. (Received: from example.com by example2.com <date> <time>). There may be an X-Originiating-IP header giving the senders IP.

If it’s a webmail account, you can check your sent mail folder. Change your webmail and / or mail server password. Turn on two factor authentication. Change the passwords of any other accounts if they use the same or similar passwords. Make sure your antivirus is from a well known brand and up to date.

Look at the message content. It may just say “Buy this product”. Or, it could be part of a more elaborate con: “This is Mandy, My wallet has been stolen and I’m stuck in <some remote country>. Can you send me $$$ via Western Union money transfer to account 1234”. If it’s the latter, it may be worth texting people, saying your account has been hacked and to ignore any such requests.